Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens Review

When you want to cover all your photo needs for an event, outing, trip, etc., with a single lens, you may want a super-zoom lens. When selecting a lens, I usually make the focal length decision first, and the Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens's superzoom focal length range qualifies it for a vast majority of needs.

If there were no downsides to a focal length range, all lenses would be such. While lens design continues to improve, my experience still leads me to question the image quality these lenses provide. Most of us place a high value on image quality, and we'll discuss that characteristic in depth below. However, getting an image of a fleeting subject is always better than not getting the image because the lens change required by the ultimate image quality kit was not afforded. Sometimes, having the right lens on the camera means getting the shot vs. not.

Fun is another factor that plays into the superzoom lens discussion. Most of us define photography as fun. However, few of us find it fun to change lenses, and some of us even cringe about the potential for imaging sensor dust being acquired during this task. Few of us find it fun to physically carry lenses we're not actively using, and most of us do find it fun to go out with a single lens that is able to photograph a wide range of scenarios.

The remarkably compact, lightweight, and high-performing Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens, featuring HLA AF, up-to-6 stops OS (optical stabilization), and good build quality, is a great all-arounder, a fun lens to carry around the yard or park, and it is an especially superb travel lens choice.

Focal Length Range

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At the top of the lens selection funnel is determining the focal length range needed for the task at hand. The focal length range is specified in the name immediately after the branding, reflecting this importance, and it seems understating to say that this lens's 18.75x zoom range is a huge asset. Focal length drives subject distance choices, which determine perspective, and when getting closer to or farther from the subject is not an option, this lens's long focal length range is especially welcome.

This lens provides an image circle large enough to cover an APS-C format imaging sensor. For those of us who think in full-frame terms, the Sony full-frame equivalence (1.5x) is 24-450mm, and the Canon full-frame equivalence (1.6x) is 25.6-480mm. Regardless of the format you think in, this lens's focal length range is outstanding, covering most needs.

I regularly use this entire range for landscape photography. Landscape photography often involves travel and hiking, and that this lens covers the range of two typical lenses is highly advantageous. I especially appreciate having 16mm available for this use.

The complete classic portraiture focal length range, the 85-135mm full-frame angle of view, and far more are present.

The wide end comfortably handles most environmental and full-body portraits, and the long end invites tight headshots with good perspective. Photograph distant kids and close kids without changing position or lenses.

This zoom range is great for sports. Capture the team photo from a reasonable distance, and moments later, reach midway into a large sports field to capture the action.

Most of us want long focal lengths for wildlife photography, and this lens has those. Switch from an environmental portrait, showing the animal in its landscape, to a tight portrait with a quick turn of the zoom ring.

The 16-300mm range is a good choice for airshows, zoos, the beach, hikes, time in the garden or park, products, and far more uses. Detail subjects abound for this lens.

This has been a convenient lens to have ready to go for whatever needs that show up.

Here is the 16-300mm range illustrated:

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Especially useful is that this APS-C lens's focal length range starts at 16mm vs. 18mm as in many other APS-C lenses. While the 18mm example shared above has 18mm reported in the EXIF info, that setting is not marked on the lens, and there is a small range that reports 18mm, so the comparison should minimally be close.

Was the 16-300mm focal length range rounded? The test chart framing distances seem at least close to expectations for that range.

Max Aperture

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A lens's maximum aperture is usually included in the product name immediately after the focal length range, reflecting this specification's next-most importance. F/3.5-6.7 is this lens's maximum aperture, the ratio of the focal length to the entrance pupil diameter.

The lower the aperture number, the wider the opening, and the more light the lens can deliver to the imaging sensor. Each "stop" in aperture change (full stop examples: f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6) increases or decreases the amount of light by a substantial factor of 2x.

Want a long focal length range that includes telephoto focal lengths in a zoom lens without a large size, heavy weight, and high price? Expect that lens to have a narrow and variable max aperture, and all superzoom lenses have such.

A smaller aperture opening facilitates using smaller, lighter, and less expensive lens elements. Because this lens's maximum opening does not increase sufficiently with focal length increase to maintain the same aperture measurement ratio, the max aperture is efficiently variable, ranging from f/3.5 to f/6.7 as the focal length range is increasingly traversed. The Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens has all of those attributes.

While the aperture value reduction is continuous, narrowing as the focal length increases, the camera rounds the reported aperture to the nearest 1/3 or 1/2 stop. Here are the focal length ranges for the Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens's reported 1/3 stop apertures.

16-17mm = f/3.5
18-27mm = f/4.0
27-38mm = f/4.5
39-46mm = f/5.0
47-89mm = f/5.6
90-299mm = f/6.3
300mm = f/6.7

Yes, that 2mm focal length range at f/3.5 qualifies this lens for that max opening. The max aperture gradually reduces to a dark f/6.3 by 90mm. Fortunately, only 300mm has f/6.7.

These narrow max apertures make this lens an unfavorable choice for photographing challenging low-light motion, such as indoor sports or outdoor sports on cloudy days. Using an ISO setting is the narrow aperture option for obtaining sharp low-light in-motion images, but the increased noise is an image quality factor. A narrow aperture is detrimental to low-light autofocus performance, slowing or inhibiting focus lock.

These examples illustrate the maximum blur this lens can create:

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While this lens's aperture is not wide, its close focusing capabilities and long focal lengths give it the ability to create a strong background blur.

Image Stabilization

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A lightweight lens with long focal lengths begs for optical stabilization, and this lens has it. This OS system is "Inspired by the same technology that powers Sigma's super-telephoto lenses used by professional wildlife and sports photographers" [Sigma], and it is effective, rated for up to 6 stops at 16mm and 4.5 stops at 300mm.

The OS system is nearly silent, with a slight whirring audible only by an ear practically against the lens. It is well behaved, not fighting against recomposition or drifting while held still.

With no OS switch available, the camera's menu option enables and disables OS.

Image Quality

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A focal length range significantly exceeding the commonly available range for a lens class instantly raises concern that image quality has been sacrificed, and 18.75x is an extreme range. In addition, this lens's low cost, light weight, and compact size factors are in play. I spent a lot of hours figuring this out.

This lens produces good center-of-the-frame sharpness from 16mm through 50mm, but somewhat soft results at 100mm. Resolution and contrast improve to reasonably sharp at 180mm, but the 300mm results are modestly soft.

In general, lenses become sharper as they are stopped down one or two stops from their wide-open apertures. With narrow wide-open apertures, this lens quickly encounters the softening effects of diffraction when stopped down, and primarily, the 100mm results show modest improvement.

Lenses typically produce decreased sharpness in the periphery of the image circle, where light rays are refracted to a stronger angle than in the center. The center-focused lab tests show a mild sharpness decline from the center to the corner at 16mm, but the longer focal length corner results did not fare well.

Taking the testing outdoors, we next look at a series of center-of-the-frame 100% resolution crop examples. These images were captured in RAW format using a Sony Alpha 1 and processed in Capture One using the Natural Clarity method. The sharpening amount was set to only "30" on a 0-1000 scale. Note that images from most cameras require some level of sharpening, but too-high sharpness settings are destructive to image details and hide the deficiencies of a lens.

Wide-open aperture results from the specified focal length are shown.

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Most of these results look good, but primarily the 100mm and 300mm results are modestly soft.

Next, we'll look at a series of comparisons showing 100% resolution extreme top left corner crops captured and processed identically to the above center-of-the-frame images. The lens was manually focused in the corner of the frame to capture these images.

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Count on samples taken from the outer extreme of the image circle to show a lens's weakest performance. The wider focal length results are not bad, and the 50mm results are especially nice. The longer results are soft.

Does corner sharpness matter? That answer depends on your composition. Landscape and architecture photographers usually appreciate corner-to-corner sharp images, while portrait and wildlife images tend to have out-of-focus corners anyway.

This lens does not exhibit focus shift, the plane of sharp focus moving forward or backward as the aperture is narrowed (residual spherical aberration or RSA). Many modern lenses automatically correct for focus shift, though focus breathing (more later) can create slight angle of view changes.

When used on a camera that utilizes its full image circle, a lens is expected to show peripheral shading at the widest aperture settings. The strongest shading is often at the widest angle, and 16mm produces just over 2 stops of corner shading. Corner shading abruptly drops to a low just over 1 stop by 24mm. After bottoming out at just over 0.5 stops at 50mm, the shading increases to just over a still low 1 stop through the longer balance of the range. By f/11, the shading is mostly gone.

One-stop of shading is often considered the number of visibility, though subject details provide a widely varying amount of vignetting discernibility. Vignetting is correctable during post-processing, with increased noise in the brightened areas the penalty, or it can be embraced, using the effect to draw the viewer's eye to the center of the frame. Study the pattern shown in our vignetting test tool to determine how your images will be affected.

Lateral (or transverse) CA (Chromatic Aberration) refers to the unequal magnification of all colors in the spectrum. Lateral CA shows as color fringing along lines of strong contrast running tangential (meridional, right angles to radii), with the mid and especially the periphery of the image circle showing the most significant amount as this is where the most significant difference in the magnification of wavelengths typically exists.

With the right lens profile and software, lateral CA is often easily correctable (often in the camera) by radially shifting the colors to coincide. However, it is always better to avoid this aberration in the first place.

Color misalignment can be seen in the site's image quality tool, but let's also look at a set of worst-case examples. The images below are 100% crops from the extreme top left corner of Sony a1 frames showing diagonal black and white lines.

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These images should only contain black and white colors, with the additional colors indicating a strong lateral CA presence at the wide and long ends of the range. Modest to mild lateral CA shows in the mid-range results.

A relatively common lens aberration is axial (longitudinal, bokeh) CA, which causes non-coinciding focal planes of the various wavelengths of light. More simply, different colors of light are focused to different depths. Spherical aberration, along with spherochromatism, or a change in the amount of spherical aberration with respect to color (looks quite similar to axial chromatic aberration but is hazier) are other common lens aberrations to observe. Axial CA remains somewhat persistent when stopping down, with the color misalignment effect increasing with defocusing. The spherical aberration color halo shows little size change as the lens is defocused, and stopping down one to two stops generally removes this aberration.

In the real world, lens defects do not exist in isolation, with spherical aberration and spherochromatism generally found, at least to some degree, along with axial CA. These combine to create a less sharp, hazy-appearing image quality at the widest apertures.

The wide-open aperture examples below compare the fringing colors of the defocused specular highlights in the foreground to the background. The lens has introduced any differences from the neutrally colored subjects.

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These images show relatively strong color blur.

Bright light reflecting off lens elements' surfaces may cause flare and ghosting, resulting in reduced contrast and sometimes interesting, usually objectionable visual artifacts. The shape, intensity, and position of the flare and ghosting effects in an image are variable, dependent on the position and nature of the light source (or sources), selected aperture, shape of the aperture blades, and quantity and quality of the lens elements and their coatings. Additionally, flare and ghosting can impact AF performance.

This lens features Sigma's HLA (High-response Linear Actuator) to suppress flare and ghosting, but the high 20-element count increases that challenge. This lens produced practically no flare effects even at narrow apertures in our standard sun in the corner of the frame flare test at 16mm, reflecting excellent performance. However, moderately strong flare effects showed in longer focal length results, especially at stopped-down apertures.

This lens has moderate barrel distortion at the wide end. However, it is not strong enough to mandate correction. By 24mm, moderate pincushion distortion is present. This distortion lessens over the rest of the focal length range, becoming mild from 180mm to 300mm.

As seen earlier in the review, it is easy to illustrate the strongest blur a lens can create, and telephoto lenses are inherently advantaged in this regard. Due to the infinite number of variables present among available scenes, assessing the blur quality, bokeh, is considerably more challenging. Here are some f/11 (for diaphragm blade interaction) examples.

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The first set of examples shows 100% crops with defocused highlights appearing normal, and the second set of examples shows full images reduced in size and looking good.

Except for a small number of specialty lenses, the wide aperture bokeh in the frame's corner does not show round defocused highlights, instead showing cat's eye shapes due to a form of mechanical vignetting. If you look through a tube at an angle, similar to the light reaching the frame's corner, the shape is not round. That is the shape we're looking at here.

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Except in the 180mm and 300mm examples, the shape truncation is limited to the corners. As the aperture narrows, the entrance pupil size is reduced, and the mechanical vignetting diminishes, making the corner shapes rounder.

A 9-blade diaphragm will create 18-point sunstars (diffraction spikes) from point light sources captured with a narrow aperture. Generally, the more a lens diaphragm is stopped down, the larger and better-shaped the sunstars tend to be. Unfortunately, a narrow max aperture lens does not afford much stopping down before reaching apertures where diffraction causes noticeable softening of details, and these lenses typically do not produce the biggest or best-shaped sunstars. Still, the blades are closed enough at f/3.5 at 16mm to create nice stars.

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That 300mm star stretches the definition. The examples above were captured at f/16.

The optical design of this lens, including 1 FLD, 4 SLD, and 4 aspherical elements, is illustrated above

If you want a 16-300mm focal length range in a compact, lightweight, low-priced lens, optical tradeoffs remain part of the equation. That said, I like many of the images I captured with this lens.

Focusing

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Sigma's HLA (High-response Linear Actuator) drives fast, accurate, and nearly silent autofocus.

The narrow apertures prevent this lens from being a great low-light AF performer.

Non-cinema lenses usually require refocusing after a focal length change. As illustrated in the 100% crops below, the reviewed lens exhibits near parfocal-like characteristics. When focused at 300mm, zooming to wider focal lengths results in reasonably well-focused results.

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Canon and Sony cameras support FTM (Full Time Manual) focusing. With no AF/MF switch is provided, the camera must control this function.

The slightly slippery, plastic-ribbed MF ring is compact, but the lens diameter increases just in front of it, making tactile location easy. The MF ring is smooth, with light resistance.

This lens features a nonlinear manual focusing rate, with a slow about 420° rotation creating a full extent change. A fast 190° rotation does the same. The rate adjusts to be ideal at all focus distances.

It is normal for the scene to change size in the frame as the focus is pulled from one extent to the other. This effect is focus breathing, a change in focal length resulting from a change in focus distance. Focus breathing impacts photographers intending to use focus stacking techniques, videographers pulling focus (without movement to camouflage the effect), and anyone critically framing while adjusting focus.

This lens produces a modest change in subject size through a full-extent (worst-case) focus distance adjustment at the wide end, and seemingly small change at the long end (where a strong blur makes this determination difficult).

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This lens has a minimum focus distance of 6.7" (170mm), and at 70mm, it generates an impressive 0.50x maximum magnification spec.

Model	Min Focus Distance		Max Magnification
Canon RF 24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM Lens	19.7"	(500mm)	0.26x
Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens	6.7"	(170mm)	0.50x
Sigma 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM C Lens	15.3"	(388mm)	0.33x
Tamron 16-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD Lens	15.4"	(390mm)	0.34x
Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD Lens	17.7"	(450mm)	0.34x
Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD Lens	19.3"	(490mm)	0.29x

At 16mm, a subject measuring approximately 2.5 x 1.7" (64 x 43mm) fills the imaging sensor at this lens's minimum MF distance. At 300mm, a 3.5 x 2.3" (89 x 59mm) subject does the same. As illustrated below, a modestly smaller subject fill the 70mm frame.

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The individual USPS love stamps measure 1.19 x 0.91" (30 x 23mm).

While this lens produces sharp center-of-the-frame details at minimum focus distance with a wide-open aperture, expect the image periphery to be soft due to field curvature. F/11 brings on increased depth of field that improves corner image quality.

The minimum focus distance is measured from the imaging sensor plane with the balance of the camera, lens, and lens hood length taking their space out of the number to create the working distance. At 16mm and 70mm, this lens's minimum focus distance working distance is only about 0.6" (15mm) without the hood mounted, and the lens significantly obstructs the subject lighting. The minimum focus distance is considerably longer at 300mm, creating adequate working distance with the hood.

This lens is not compatible with Sigma or Sony teleconverters.

Design & Features

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As usual for Sigma Contemporary lenses, this one features a TSC (Thermally Stable Composite) exterior with an attractive design and tight tolerances.

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Like all other superzoom lenses, this one extends as the focal length is increased. The zoom ring has a firm but even resistance out to 300mm where the lens is extended by a rather long 3.5" (89mm). The fully extended inner barrel has surprisingly little play.

This lens's only switch is the raised extension lock switch, which is easy to use but not yet needed in the sample lens. I miss the AF/MF switch.

Sigma states that this lens "features a dust- and splash-resistant structure for use in harsh conditions." Usually, Contemporary lenses are not as well sealed as those in the Art and Sports lines.

The front lens element features a coating that repels fingerprints, dust, water, oil, and other contaminants and makes cleaning considerably easier.

This lens is quite compact and lightweight for the superzoom range. It is a pleasure to carry and use.

Model	Weight oz(g)		Dimensions w/o Hood "(mm)		Filter	Year
Canon RF 24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM Lens	26.5	(750)	3.2 x 4.8	(80.4 x 122.5)	72	2019
Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens	22.1	(625)	2.9 x 4.8	(73.8 x 121.4)	67	2025
Sigma 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM C Lens	20.6	(584)	3.1 x 4.0	(79.0 x 101.5)	72	2014
Tamron 16-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD Lens	19.0	(539)	3.0 x 3.9	(75.0 x 99.5)	67	2014
Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD Lens	25.1	(710)	3.1 x 4.9	(79.0 x 123.9)	72	2017
Tamron 28-300mm F4-7.1 Di III VC VXD Lens	21.5	(610)	3.0 x 5.0	(77.0 x 126.0)	67	2024

View and compare the complete Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens Specifications in the site's lens specifications tool.

Here is a visual comparison:

Positioned from left to right are the following lenses:

Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary
Tamron 28-300mm F4-7.1 Di III VC VXD Lens
Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD Lens

The same lenses are shown extended below.

Use the site's product image comparison tool to visually compare the Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens to other lenses.

This lens uses 67mm filters. This compact, affordable size is especially common. A standard-thickness circular polarizer filter does not increase wide-aperture peripheral shading. I recommend the Breakthrough Photography X4.

The plastic LH706-03 lens hood is included in the box (but was not supplied with my loaner lens, which is the reason why there are no lens with hood product images in this review). The hood's petal shape is optimized to block as much light outside the utilized image circle as possible. Zoom lens hoods must be tuned for the widest angle of the zoom range, which means less than optimal protection is provided at the long end. Still, this hood offers reasonable front element protection.

Price, Value, Compatibility

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This lens has a modest price. Combined with its extensive focal length range, quality features, and quality build, it is a good value.

The "DC" in the name indicates that this lens provides an image circle wide enough to cover (only) an APS-C imaging sensor, and the "DN" to indicate that this lens was designed for short-flange mirrorless cameras is no longer used. The Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens is available in Canon RF, Sony E, Leica L, and Fujifilm X mounts.

Sigma develops, manufactures, and sells the Sony E-mount version of this lens based on the specifications of the E-mount, disclosed by Sony Corporation under license agreement. "This product is developed, manufactured, and sold under license from Canon Inc." [Sigma]

Sigma provides a 1-year limited warranty, and Sigma Corporation of America provides a limited 3-year warranty extension.

The reviewed Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens was on loan from Sigma.

Summary

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The remarkably compact, lightweight, physically high-performing, and affordable Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens's, with a headlining superzoom focal length range, is a great all-arounder, a simple, super convenient, and fun lens to carry around the yard, park, or beach, and it is an especially superb travel lens choice. The 18.75x zoom range makes this lens an ideal single-lens solution to a wide range of photography needs, but this lens's feature package requires an image quality sacrifice, especially in the periphery and at the long end.